


The Path That Leads to Nowhere

by Chronicler



Category: One Direction (Band), zayn malik - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, British English, British Slang, Drabble, Drag Me Down video, Friendship, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, Love, M/M, Queer Themes, Stream of Consciousness, Yorkshire dialect, platonic zouis, ziam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 13:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4627197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn spends his nights walking while he waits for Liam to come back from the stars... </p><p>An angsty little drabble inspired by the new Drag Me Down video.</p><p>Also platonic Zouis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path That Leads to Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> My non-fandom friend Keir prompted me to write a short story inspired by the word 'path'. I wrote this quickly in the early hours, then admittedly spent all day editing. Not coincidentally I was listening to Patsy Cline -
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsRNCvHXHHU
> 
> Thank you Sarah and Courtney for reading it and saying it made sense, though they didn't suggest any changes, so I'm trying to resist the urge to edit. 
> 
> Mostly autobiographical. Yes that is disturbing.
> 
> I'm warning you that I didn't use warnings. I don't want to use spoilers. So I understand if you don't want to read it.
> 
> Poem by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson. This Zayn reads old poetry, apparently. http://www.bartleby.com/271/68.html
> 
> Update: I failed to stop editing :( I just added a bit more.

x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x

All the ways that lead to Somewhere,  
Echo with the hurrying feet  
Of the Struggling and the Striving,  
But the way I find so sweet  
Bids me dream and bids me linger,  
Joy and Beauty are its goal,—  
On the path that leads to Nowhere  
I have sometimes found my soul!

x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x

Zayn walked. Walked out past the edge of the city lights. Walked till the stars were clear and bright with no artificial light to diminish them. Kept walking. Walked till his feet ached and his skin rose into angry blisters. The tall grass brushed his fingertips, the air heavy with the pollen of wildflowers. He walked and walked and walked. Looking up at the distant stars.

It wasn’t even paths he followed. Just vague tracks through the fields, through gaps in hedgerows, the grass worn down to hollowed mud. Thorns grasped sharply at him like skeletal fingers.

Some nights he walked through the city. Walked for miles. Walked endlessly along pavements running the length of roads lit by streetlights – but they overwhelmed the stars. Cars passed, people with lives to get back to disturbing the silence. But the roads seemed endless to him, like he could walk forever and never reach his destination.

Or he’d find tiny, narrow alleyways with mysterious, rotting doorways, and imagine for a moment he was a character in a fantasy novel and a whole other world lay beyond. But only for a moment, before reality crashed down on him again.

Sometimes he walked through woods, but they seemed less infinite, stuttering. Besides, the spindly arms of the trees reaching up to the heavens blotted out the stars, the sticky life filling their leaves mocking him in the gloom.

Sometimes people yelled, tried to bother him, but what did it matter, there was nothing to be afraid of anymore, what could happen to him now?

Some nights the moon watched him. It waxed and waned as the nights vanished, one after another after another slipping through his fingers like grains of sand as he judged and condemned himself.

But anything was better than being still, being trapped in his own head, lying in an empty bed. The mattress was starkly bare; making their bed for himself would seem like he'd forgotten, had accepted being alone.

And each night, when the blackness admitted defeat, surrendering to the slow march of the sun, he went home. Not that it was home anymore, not with only him in it. But, finally exhausted, he slept, even in the sticky heat. It was always so hot and bright here, so hard to escape, to hide, so unlike the grey fog of his youth. But there was some relief in the night, in the dark.

Another night, another endless night, he stood in a field looking up at the sky, the endless sea of stars stretching to infinity. So distant. But Liam was up there with them. Had finally fulfilled his dream, to tread the stars. In his white suit, like an angel. But there had been fire that looked more like hell, and thunder, and so many people watching when the shuttle took off. Heading up into the sky. But he’d be back soon. It was just hard, the waiting, waiting to be together again. Being the one left behind, so empty even while trapped on the solid earth. It cycled and cycled and wouldn't stop. It should just stop. How did no one else notice the world had ended?

‘Hey,’ Zayn said, answering his mobile, all the nights blending together into a solid mass of want and need. He’d just woken up, was pulling on some crumpled clothes, getting ready to go out and meet the stars.

‘Zayn? Finally! I’ve been calling all night, must be costing me a ton, where the fuck have you been?’ Louis said, sounding even more highly strung than usual.

‘Sorry,’ Zayn replied vaguely, phone clamped between his cheek and shoulder while he pulled up his jeans and zipped his fly. ‘I was asleep all day, turned it off.’

‘It’s good you’re sleeping, I guess. But you need to get back on to days, y'know? Go to bed at night like a normal fucking person.’

'You're up late too, been filling up my fucking voice mail again.' With a sharp sigh, Zayn put the phone on speaker and tossed it onto the bed while he sat on the edge to pull on his boots.

'Look, I'm sorry, I just, I think about when we were kids sometimes.' Louis voice gradually disappearing into the past as he tried to push back the encroaching silence. 'I wanna say things were easier then, but they were shit. I thought you'd always be here though. But you're not taking care of yourself, and I dunno what to do. Are you even eating? I know what you're like: who needs food when you've got hash and razor blades, right?' Louis paused, waiting for an answer that never came. 'Zayn? You still there?’ He sounding so distant. Everything seemed so distant now. ‘ _Zayn?_ ’

Zayn pulled on an old leather jacket of Liam’s, so soft and well worn. It still held a faint memory of Liam’s scent, almost seemed to remember his shape. Liam was so big and strong, so seemingly eternal. Zayn closed his eyes for a moment, feeling held, feeling small and fragile, the sleeves reaching down past his knuckles.

‘ _Zayn!_ ’ Louis yelled through the speaker, voice tinny, crackly, almost gone.

‘Shit, bro, don’t be such a bloody drama queen,’ Zayn said as he grabbed his phone and put it back to his ear. ‘I was just getting ready to go out.’

‘Where you going?’

‘Just out…’

Louis sighed. ‘Still going walking all night? It’s… it’s not healthy, y'know that, right? You need to talk to someone. Anyone. There someone there you can call to come over? I wish you weren’t so far away, I wish he hadn’t taken you to the other side of the fucking ocean and left you there. Sometimes I hate him for it, then I hate myself for hating him…’

‘It’s after midnight,’ Zayn said, glancing at the clock, ‘Everyone here’s asleep, safe in their beds,’ how he hated them for still having their illusion of safety, ‘why are you even calling so late anyway? Fuck, it must be almost morning there? I hate dawn.’

‘I'm covering the night shift, and I was worried about you… I just, I had a bad feeling. Sometimes I think one night you won’t come back. That they’ll have to search and search, and find you beneath some chalk-white cliff, or broken at the bottom of a multi-storey car park, or washed up near a bridge, pale and cold…’

‘I wonder if falling’s like flying,’ Zayn said, sounding distant even to himself. ‘Don’t worry about it, yeah? It dun’t matter. I need to go, Liam’s up there and I wanna go see the stars.’ His eyes settled on the picture next to his bed. Himself, so happy, Liam behind him, arms around his shoulders, the only stars the endless light of joy in the warm, rich brown of Liam's eyes.

‘Zayn,’ Louis’ voice rose the tiny amount needed for it to skirt the edges of hysteria, ‘you’re fucking scaring me! How many times have I gotta tell you this? Liam in't up there. He in’t anywhere! You were there, and I watched it on live _fucking_ TV, worst day of my life. The landing went bad, some shit about re-entry I never understood,’ his voice caught and he took a deep breath. ‘The ship came down in a billion fucking pieces, looked like falling stars filling the sky…’

Icarus Liam had called himself once, said they both flew too close to the sun. Zayn had laughed, _laughed_ , teased him for even knowing who Icarus was.

Louis choked back a sob, drew in a shaky breath, the tension that kept him together pulled so taut it almost snapped. ‘ _Please_ , Zayn, he wouldn’t have wanted this. I don’t want this. If you scatter into a billion pieces too I’ll have no one left to talk to. I don’t know if you’ve really lost your fucking mind or if you’re just grieving in your own fucked up way, but I –’

‘I have to go now, take care of yourself,’ Zayn said, grabbing his cigarettes and hanging up, cutting off whatever Louis was about to say. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Zayn was already drowning.

And maybe tonight he wouldn’t make it back. One night he wouldn't. Would just keep walking until he couldn't walk another step. He was so fucking tired.

He pulled the door closed behind himself and locked it, out of habit, then started off down the path that must be so accustomed to his footsteps. He must be leaving behind footprints no one could see.

The cold, endless fire of the stars was waiting. And Liam was still up there with them, waiting for him too, if he just kept walking and didn't stop.

**_ The end_**

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't yell at me. Honestly, it was meant to be porn. I saw the new video for Drag Me Down. So I figured: big muscle-bound astronaut Liam meeting beautiful finely-sculptured R&B star Zayn in a bar, and Zayn laughing when Liam says he's an astronaut. And Liam being all 'No, I really am, it's not just a pick-up line... but is it working...?' Which of course it does...
> 
> But the Zayn-less-ness of the video made me sad. No Ziam together. And I'm more than sad enough already. So this happened instead. I don't know what the Zayn in this story was. It didn't matter anymore, by the time this story is set, whatever he used to be.
> 
> I can't linger in this story, it's too painful, so I'll stop editing now.


End file.
